Internet sales order processing stands at a crossroads. With emerging
payment standards, such as the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol,
first-generation e-commerce practices are rapidly reaching the end of
usefulness. They simply will not hold up to the online transaction
processing requirements of the next-generation of e-commerce.
What many now call their e-commerce system is little more than a
glorified extension of paper-based processing, with few (if any) linkages
into back office order entry and fulfillment systems. More often than not,
Web form-based capture of input from a customer is received via e-mail,
printed off, and rekeyed into a data entry terminal. Even today''s
giants in online sales admit these shortcomings. "The way it works today, we
reinput them" claims Dell''s Senior Marketing Manager Bill Morris as he describes how Dell processes the orders they receive over the Internet.
Like any other technology, there''s good and bad news. The good news
is that companies have begun to learn about their customer''s online buying
habits. The bad news is that customer relations are in jeopardy.
Internet shoppers, led to believe they''re transacting in real time
often become disillusioned and take their business to competitors or back to
the offline world when days or weeks go by and their order is still
waiting. Worse, if days pass before a call arrives informing them that their order can''t be filled right away, they may become furious and cancel their order altogether. Either way, business is threatened. Obviously, changes must be made before the promise of Internet commerce can be fulfilled.
Ideally, Web-based commerce stands to save companies veritable
fortunes in operating costs by eliminating human intervention in order
processing. Tight Web-to-legacy system integration would help to realize this goal. While colossal work is required to achieve success, those who pull it off stand to lead the marketplace.
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
